PEACEABLE KINGDOM By Marie Liu
L
ong after Penn’s Treaty with the Lenape in 1681, the event would be memorialized over and over again by Quaker preacher and artist Edward Hicks. In a series of 62 paintings he depicts Quaker colonists and Lenape Indians shaking to the Treaty of Shackamaxon. These ubiquitous folk images have become so popular and familiar to us in this century, yet I for one never realized that there was actually more than one version or that the mountains featured in many of these paintings, were none other than the most iconic scene in the Poconos.
38 POCONO LIVING MAGAZINE© APRIL/MAY 2020
Virtually all paintings in this series titled Peaceable Kingdom or Penn’s Treaty depict William Penn and his Quakers at the Treaty of Shackamaxon with Chief Tammany and the Lenape. Two very different groups peacefully coming together to form an agreement to secure land for the future city of Philadelphia. Sometimes Hicks portrayed them at the actual Piedmont site under a giant Elm tree (Penn’s Treaty), others featuring the Delaware Water Gap in the background, while beasts and babies play in the foreground (Peaceable Kingdom). Using this similar
